


Bleak

by stardropdream



Category: xxxHoLic
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-14
Updated: 2013-01-14
Packaged: 2017-11-25 11:19:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/638328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardropdream/pseuds/stardropdream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the bleak midwinter, Himawari and Kohane befriend one another, meeting when they can, but always hesitating to come closer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bleak

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I'm drawing off ideas of that song about Jesus. I know. 
> 
> Originally posted on LJ May 20, 2009.

Her mother had a beautiful voice. Himawari was never one to sing, for she had little confidence in her singing voice. But her mother often told her that she was a wonderful piano player. On long winter nights, her mother would stand up near the piano while Himawari played Christmas carols, and she would sing to Himawari’s father. And in that bubble of protection, Himawari liked to pretend that maybe she was a normal girl. Outside the walls of her home, she could not be like this with other people. The people she loved ultimately were hurt by her curse. Her parents would smile and hug her, but it was always distant. Slightly. She knew they didn’t mean it.   
  
She knew that they loved her. But she also knew that they feared her curse, even if they remained unaffected by it. She loved them in return, and, thus, did not blame them for that small flicker of fear that always wavered behind strong eyes. And she would smile and tell them she was fine, because her smile seemed to alleviate their pain, if only a small bit.   
  


_In the bleak midwinter, frost wind made moan,  
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone; _

  
  
She listened to the soft croon of her mother’s voice as she lifted a delicate hand and brushed hair so similar to Himawari’s off her shoulder. Her dress dipped low to reveal a marking shaped like a clover. In Himawari’s mind, she would find it almost ironic that her mother had such a marking when her daughter brought nothing but misfortune to others.   
  
Himawari would draw her eyes away from the piano keys and stare at her mother as she stared at her father. Her mother would sway slightly, in time to Himawari’s music, and her full lips would curl into a pleasant smile, soft eyes watching the man sitting on the couch, his eyes trained solely on her, in turn. Their eyes wouldn’t pull away from one another’s, and Himawari’s bubble would burst. There was nowhere she belonged, after all. Not even in her own family.  
  
She played the piano, and the notes would grow melancholy. If her parents heard the change in their daughter, they said nothing. They never knew what to say.   
  
  
\---  
  
  
“We have a meeting in a couple hours,” her mother said briskly as she walked by, tugging up a pencil skirt while trying to apply eye shadow at the same time. She marched past without giving Kohane as much as a glance.   
  
Kohane pulled herself up onto a kitchen chair and picked silently at her food. She watched her mother teeter around the room, searching for an earring or her overcoat. Kohane ate slowly and thought that the food wasn’t as good as Kimihiro-kun’s.   
  
“Let’s go,” her mother ordered a short while later. Kohane set down her chopsticks and walked towards the door, her mother following after her. Kohane opened the door and paused, glancing at her mother. The woman frowned. “Come on. Get going.”   
  
Kohane left the house.   
  
It was still winter, and as they approached the formal looking office buildings, Kohane could hear the distant song of Christmas carols a couple blocks away.   
  


_In the bleak midwinter, frost wind made moan,  
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone…_

  
  
“Pretty,” Kohane said to herself, because if she’d spoken to her mother, she would not have responded. The winter wind nipped at Kohane’s ears and she wrapped her coat tighter around her.   
  
“Come on,” her mother snapped when she felt Kohane was lingering too long, listening to the winter song.   
  
  
\---  
  
  
“Wait outside,” her mother ordered as the meeting drew to a close. They’d approached her mother’s favorite part of the meeting: the money. Kohane slid off her chair and gave the television director a small bow before walking away, her eyes on the door the entire time. She didn’t say goodbye to her mother, because her mother would not have responded.   
  
She exited into the waiting room. The receptionist looked up and gave Kohane a cheerfully practiced smile. Kohane nodded silently and sat down on a chair. It was quiet for a long moment, punctuated by the receptionists typing on her computer. Kohane looked out the window and wondered if they were still singing Christmas carols a cappella or if someone had accompanied them with music yet.   
  
Kohane glanced at the receptionist and then at the door that hid her mother. She frowned thoughtfully before standing up and walking towards the door that led outside.   
  
“I need some air,” she told the receptionist when it looked like she was about to protest. Kohane slipped outside and felt the burst of cool air. She inhaled and exhaled slowly, feeling the cold winter’s air rattling in her lungs. The clouds above threatened rain, and Kohane had to stop herself from wishing for snow.   
  
She walked away from the offices and towards the park on the opposite side of the road. She walked through the park, and through the trees she could hear the distant hum of someone’s soprano. Kohane found herself walking in time with that gentle hum, and longed to hear the words that cut through the bleak winter day, a beam of light in darkness.   
  
Other patrons to the park peppered the walkway Kohane was on, and her feet shuffled quietly. She was walking as the first raindrops began to fall. She paused and tilted her head upwards, staring at the grey clouds high above her. She looked as if she might say something, but then a raindrop splashed in her eye and she blinked, lowering her head once again.   
  
She walked.  
  
She knew Kimihiro-kun would worry if he saw her outside in the rain, but she’d forgotten her umbrella. The rain left the sky dark, and the raindrops splashed on her face as she tilted her head up to see, wondering if the sun would come out eventually. She closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of winter. The rain would probably turn to snow soon.  
  
She sat down, and her wet dress clung to her. Her limp hair dripped the water it caught and gave the illusion that she was crying. But Kohane never cried. Not anymore, at least.   
  
Her musings were interrupted, however, when the steady onslaught of rain ceased. She lifted her head and stared at the yellow umbrella distantly before focusing her attention on the girl who held it. She was smiling pleasantly, and her eyes watched her.   
  
“Kohane-chan, right?” the girl asked. The bird on her shoulder chirped in greeting and Kohane’s eyes went to it.   
  
“…Yes,” she said finally. Unsure. Perhaps it was someone who’d seen her on television.   
  
“Oh, sorry, I guess you don’t recognize me,” the girl continued, maintaining a safe distance away from the young girl. “I’m Watanuki-kun’s friend.”   
  
Kohane paused, looking up at the girl with greater interest. A spark of recognition ignited in her eyes. “Oh… you were there that one time.”  
  
The girl continued to smile, but it still looked distant, shadowed. “I’m Kunogi Himawari. It’s nice to meet you.”   
  
“It’s nice to meet you, too, Kunogi-san.”  
  
And it was simple as that. An exchange, a passing of two ships in the night. But the girl didn’t leave, and she was still smiling. A sad, distant smile. Kohane wished she would really smile, because that painted expression didn’t fit her pretty face.   
  
The girl held the umbrella out. “Here. Watanuki-kun wouldn’t want you to get sick.”   
  
Kohane took the umbrella with some hesitancy, and the black-haired girl was quick to retreat, her hand dropping at her side. Kohane noticed, but made no note of it. She’d grown far too used to isolation that it didn’t even compute anymore.   
  
“Is Kohane-chan alone?”  
  
Kohane paused and looked at the girl with long black hair, a pleasant expression, and soft eyes. She looked at this girl who maintained a safe distance and thought about her mother, even farther from her.   
  
She lowered her eyes for a moment and sighed. When she raised her head again, the other girl was still smiling distantly.   
  
The darkness grew as the dark clouds rolled in, and the rain came down in sheets. Kohane realized vaguely that Himawari was getting wet. Slowly, she held the umbrella out to her, and it cast a shadow across Himawari’s painfully empty smile.   
  
“Yes.”   
  
  
\---  
  
  
Himawari came home and her mother was watching television. It was the show on the mediums. Sitting, delicately and quietly, was Kohane. There was a bandage around her head. Himawari froze and stared at the little girl and even Tanpopo stopped rustling on her shoulder.   
  
Her mother noticed her hesitancy. “Was there a show you wanted to watch?”  
  
“…No,” Himawari said, her eyes trained on Kohane. She sat down next to her mother and watched the little girl until the show ended and her heart ached.   
  
Her father came home and her mother stood to greet him. Himawari continued to stare at the television, even after the television had been switched off and there was nothing but black.  
  
She heard her mother’s singing from the other room. She stood and peeked around the corner and watched as her mother’s hand trailed over her father’s shoulder, a gentle smile on her lips.   
  


_Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,  
In the bleak midwinter, long ago._

  
  
  
\---  
  
  
The second time she saw Himawari, it was snowing.   
  
Her mother had another meeting, and left with merely the instructions to stay inside. Kohane brushed some hair over her shoulder and her soft fingertips brushed over bandages. She paused and looked out the window. It was raining.   
  
She tilted her head towards where Himawari’s yellow umbrella leaned against her bedpost, near Kimihiro-kun’s. Rain pattered against her window as she slid away towards the door, her hand clutching a bright yellow umbrella in her tiny, yet steady, grip.   
  
Outside it was cold, as it often was in winter, and she opened the umbrella to protect herself from the chilling rain. She walked. She wasn’t sure where she was going, and she didn’t care. She just wanted to walk and forget about the house disappearing behind her, a small dot on the horizon.   
  
As she walked, she recognized the world around her. She found herself back in the park she’d been in before. The rain fell and steadily, the rounded, chilling raindrops softened to a light coating of snow.   
  
It didn’t stick, but watching the thick white snowflakes fall was enough for Kohane. In the distance, she could hear the soft hum of voices together in a chorus. She moved in beat with the tune that should be saturating the air. The world, save for that distant lilt of voices, was silent. She watched the snowflakes fall.   
  
She turned a corner and she paused, her eyes landing on the girl before she even recognized her. Himawari looked up, feeling eyes on her, and she gave her that same distant smile.   
  
“Kohane-chan,” she greeted as the girl approached. “What are you doing here?”   
  
The younger girl approached and stood in front of the girl. With each incoming step, Kohane noticed the slight, ever-so-slight, tensing of Himawari’s shoulders. It was almost unnoticeable and Kohane wondered if Himawari was even aware she was doing so.   
  
“I was walking,” Kohane said and looked up at the falling snowflakes. They landed in Himawari’s hair and seemed to glow. She offered the umbrella. “This is yours. Thank you for letting me borrow it.”   
  
Himawari reached out her hand, smile still in place, and grabbed the umbrella. Their fingers didn’t touch, and perhaps it was natural that happened but Kohane had always been hypersensitive to such things. She watched as Himawari grasped her umbrella but kept it over Kohane’s head. Kohane wished she’d stop smiling like that.   
  
The bird on her shoulder chirped and Kohane’s eyes went to him. He fluttered his wings and his feathers puffed out. Kohane observed it silently, trying to figure out what was so different about this bird.   
  
“His name’s Tanpopo,” Himawari was saying, that same, empty smile on her face as she spoke. Her eyes were distant, watching something that Kohane couldn’t see, the shadow of regret and heartbreak wavering in her silent eyes.   
  
“He’s very nice,” she finally said when the silence had stretched on long enough. Tanpopo fluttered.   
  
“Yes,” Himawari agreed, eyes far more expressive than that smile ever could be. “He’s very special to me.”   
  
Kohane nodded and they lapsed into silence. Kohane looked out over the park, watching the way the snow lingered on the ground. She lifted her head and watched the sky, her eyes falling closed.   
  
And as her world fell into darkness, Kohane watched that heartbreaking smile slip off Himawari’s lips.   
  
  
\---  
  
  
She tugged at the leaves of a three leaf clover. When she was younger, she liked to split one of the leaves and half and pretend she’d found a four leaf clover. Somehow, that magic gave her the strength to keep moving and endure her mother’s distance. She plucked the three leaves off one by one.   
  
The clover had peeked out of the snow, just barely. And Kohane had plucked it up out of curiosity. A clover that dared to emerge from snow. One by one the leaves fell, collecting on the ground. In the labyrinth of the park, there was one single girl who slept alone. As the night fell, the wind felt so wild against her cheeks and she wondered if her eyes that stung bitterly from the wind would ever cry. One by one the leaves fell.   
  
“Kohane-chan?” a voice whispered and Kohane felt herself tense.   
  
She looked over her shoulder at the girl who stood there, and Kohane wondered why she kept returning to this spot and why Himawari kept returning to this spot, too.   
  
The world seemed to drag to a halt and she barely noticed the bitter wind whipping against her face. Her spirit had been drained dry, and the last leaf of the clover fell from her fingertips and onto the soft snow below.   
  
Himawari’s eyes followed the leaf’s descent. “What’s that?”  
  
“A three-leaf clover,” Kohane said. “I never find four-leaf clovers.”  
  
Himawari smiled and it was just as tense as Kohane remembered. “Me neither.”   
  
“I suppose you must be truly fortunate to find one,” Kohane mused out loud and missed the slight tensing of shoulders and the stretch of a painful smile across chapped lips. When she looked back at Himawari, she looked just as she always did.  
  
“I suppose so,” she agreed and Tanpopo chirped almost mournfully.   
  
Himawari’s smile, Kohane mused, would have been very beautiful for others. Kohane could only see the hollowness there due to her own experiences. She didn’t smile like her, she didn’t even pretend to be happy. She simply stared ahead impassively and Himawari tried to smile at her future. And she supposed to others, Himawari’s smile was beautiful and cheerful and pleasant.   
  
But to her it seemed empty.   
  
She wondered if Himawari smiled like this at Kimihiro.   
  
“Kunogi-san,” she started and watched Himawari’s head to tip slightly to the side in question. “Would you like to sit down?”   
  
Himawari’s smile didn’t falter, but Kohane saw the way the corner of her eyes stretched as she dropped down beside Kohane, as far away as she could sit from Kohane. It would have been comical for anybody else. For Kohane, it only broke her heart.   
  
Her instincts told her that she should turn and run. That she shouldn’t bother trying to befriend others. None of them wanted to be near her. None of them wanted anything to do with her. Every passing day and night, her limits were pressed and that was okay. That was the way the world worked.   
  
The world was crashing down and she could not bring herself to care. Himawari was distant and yet right there. And Kohane wondered why she cared for this girl’s friendship. There were probably thousands of girls like her, all of them unwilling to sit next to Kohane. Just like her mother.   
  
Kohane bowed her head. The comparison between her mother and Himawari…   
  
She hated herself for it.  
  
And yet…  
  
Kohane kept her head bowed. Himawari’s distance was obviously due to Kohane, she thought.   
  
It was all and then it was nothing. Kohane hated herself for that distance. She felt Himawari’s defenses, and despite the best of intentions on Kohane’s part, there was always that strange, lingering sense of regret between the two girls. Kohane would watch her from the corner of her eyes. She would watch in those split seconds when Himawari didn’t think Kohane was looking and that smile would slip away. And she would wonder, over and over again, like thousands of clover leaves falling to the ground… _why?_  
  
  
  
\---  
  
  
Himawari went home that night and collapsed on her bed, cradling her hands against her chest and clenching her eyes shut. She didn’t move from that position for a long time until Tanpopo nipped at her chin and chirped quietly in the darkness of her room.   
  
The girl shifted and touched the little bird’s tiny head. She smiled faintly, her eyes half-lidded and she laughed, clenching her hands together.   
  
“So…” she said to herself and couldn’t quite finish the sentence. Instead, she wrapped up in the darkness and closed her eyes again, and hoping that the little girl was okay.   
  
  
\---  
  
  


_In the bleak midwinter, frost wind made moan,  
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone…_

  
  
“Where have you been?” her mother demanded as Kohane shut the door behind her. “We had a meeting to go to an hour ago!”   
  
Kohane stared at her mother, past her shoulder, out the window, towards the park… where Himawari was probably still sitting, her head bowed and her smile fragile.  
  
“I was out,” she said impassively.   
  
“With that… boy?” her mother snapped, obviously thinking of Kimihiro and his intrusion on her daughter’s life.   
  
“No.”  
  
Her mother stared at her for a long moment, her lips pursed and her eyebrows furrowed. Kohane met them evenly before turning away and heading towards the stairs.  
  
“And where do you think you’re going, we—” Whatever her mother was about to say, however, was interrupted by the shrill ring of a telephone. She rushed to pick it up and Kohane retreated upstairs.   
  
She sat on her bed and stared out the window at the landscape beyond, covered in freshly fallen snow. She gripped the fabric of her dress and removed the gloves Kimihiro had given her. She sighed softly, and unlike in the park with Himawari, her breath did not crystallize.   
  
Invisible.   
  
She stayed on her bed until the shadows from the setting sun left her outside of the blinding light and, instead, in still darkness. She didn’t move for a long time, even after her body was fatigued and her eyelids drooped.   
  
  
\---  
  
  
“Here you go,” Himawari offered the steaming cup of hot chocolate. Kohane reached out and took it, but was careful not to touch Himawari’s fingertips. She’d long since learned that the girl did not like to be touched by Kohane. And Kohane, long since used to such treatment, did not question the lack of contact.   
  
“Thank you,” she said softly and blew on the steaming cup.   
  
She heard rather than saw Himawari sit down next to her, with a fair amount of distance between the two of them. The distance stretched on longer than the silence between them. The lulls in conversation were frequent. Kohane never knew what to say to Himawari. Himawari never knew what to say to Kohane.   
  
Hours could pass between the two of them, and Kohane could count the minutes when Himawari was not there. She was always there, sitting beside her, but her eyes were often distant, and her pasted smile growing softer and softer with every passing moment. And when Himawari spoke, all Kohane could hear was white noise, all she could hear was thinly veiled messages hidden beneath nothing.   
  
Himawari was lonely. Himawari was quiet. Himawari was bruised.   
  
And Kohane wished there was something she could do. But she could not begin to fathom for the life of her, just why Himawarwi was like that. Just why this girl, this friendly, peaceful, kind girl was lonely and distrustful. There was never a moment when Himawari was not polite, and she always seemed happy to spend time with Kohane when they ran into one another in the park, but Kohane could not understand why this girl would spend time with someone like her.   
  
“How is Kimihiro-kun?” Kohane asked quietly.   
  
Himawari paused before swallowing the sip of hot chocolate in her mouth. She mused over her question and stared at the sky, the light sprinkling of white snowflakes in the grey sky.   
  
“Watanuki-kun’s good,” she said at last, punctuating this declaration with another sip. “He’s better…”  
  
It was in that briefest of moments that Kohane saw the gentle expression her eyes and the way her smile seemed to curl just the tiniest bit more into sincerity. Kohane wondered if her face looked like that, too, when she thought of him. She sipped her hot chocolate silently.   
  
“That cloud looks like Tanpopo,” she said, pointing at one white cloud in a sea of grey clouds. It stood out. Instantly she felt childish for saying such a thing, but she did not lower her hand. She waited patiently for Himawari, because she knew that, no matter how much of a foolish child she felt, Himawari would respond kindly and with that same, gentle smile.   
  
Himawari inspected where Kohane’s finger indicated. She nodded. “It does.”  
  
  
\---  
  
  
“They’re making snowmen,” Himawari said, with the slightest bit of awe in her voice despite the fact that, when it snows, making snowmen was perfectly acceptable.   
  
Kohane looked up at the girl for a moment and wondered why the girl was envious of snowmen, because her eyes looked on with longing for half a second before they were quickly veiled behind her customary look of politeness.   
  
The smaller girl looked down. The little children had taken their usual spot near the bench and were, instead, building a snowman and a snowwoman on the bench. Their faces were sloppily done, with only three or four rocks serving as smiles and sticks replacing carrots as noses.   
  
Kohane tried to banish the thought that it would be fun to make a snowman.   
  
She glanced at Himawari and looked away again. She didn’t ask. She didn’t ask if Himawari wanted to build snowmen.   
  
Himawari wished she had.  
  
  
\---  
  
  


_Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,  
In the bleak midwinter, long ago._

  
  
It was by pure chance that Kohane finally touched Himawari. They were walking through the park. The snow was melting just the slightest bit and bits of grass were poking out from the snow. The snowmen the children had built at least a week ago were still on that bench. So they walked.   
  
Despite the inches of physical distance and the miles of emotional distance shared between them, Kohane felt comfortable around the taller girl. As long as she didn’t get too close. As soon as the little girl crossed an invisible boundary, it felt as if her entire body was dipped in ice water. She couldn’t understand why such a thing happened. She couldn’t understand why Himawari would have such a bone-chilling effect on her.   
  
And then Kohane slipped.   
  
Before the girl could come down on the cold ground, Himawari was grabbing her wrist and jerking her upwards. A thousand alarms went off in Kohane’s head as the girl’s fingers curled around her wrist. Each finger like a thousand needles digging into her skin, razor blades slicing through her skin. Her eyes widened and she stared at Himawari for the longest moment, her throat closing around the words she tried to speak and her body screaming at her to run away, run away, run away.   
  
She swallowed thickly and it felt like she was swallowing nothing but excuses, apologies, alibis… each one sliding down her throat slowly and painfully.   
  
Himawari was quick to let go of her hand.   
  
“Be sure to be careful, Kohane-chan,” she said gently, and her smile was just a bit too forced to be her normal forced smile. She closed her eyes and tilted her head to the side, but her shoulders were tensed and her hands were balled into fists at her sides.   
  
She recognized the feeling screaming through her veins. She’d felt it before.   
  
“Ah, I’m sorry.”   
  
They stood in an awkward silence. The wind kissed their cheeks.   
  
She’d felt that feeling before. The time when she’d met Kimihiro-kun and he’d given her the balloon. It lingered on him, ever so slightly. So it had been Himawari.   
  
Himawari wasn’t looking at her, but, instead, was smiling benignly at a tree behind Kohane and slightly off to her right. And suddenly the world made sense, if only for a little moment.  
  
She looked up at the girl with wavy black hair, smiling at her quietly, and Kohane thought she was the most beautiful girl in the world. Even with the heartbreak in her eyes.   
  
Hesitantly, she reached out her hands, despite every fiber of her being telling her to pull away, to get away to where it was safe. But she didn’t listen. Her small fingertips touched Himawari’s hands before holding them gently. Her body screamed, let go, let go, let go. But she wouldn’t.  
  
She saw Himawari’s hands tighten, the knuckles growing white, as if the older girl was silently urging her to let go, let go, let go. Get away. Unlucky girl. But Kohane wouldn’t listen. She looked up at the girl, and her eyes softened.   
  
“Thank you,” she said, after a pregnant pause.  
  
The taller girl was silent for a long moment before offering a small smile, a real smile. “You’re welcome.”   
  
That night, Kohane burned her hands on the stove while removing the kettle. But she didn’t care. She didn’t even notice the pain as she smiled softly, thinking about the unlucky child and hoping that she knew just how much she wanted to see Himawari again.


End file.
